Also, this template should not routinely be used in regular article text and certainly not where an em-dash would be more appropriate. As a rule, this template should not be used between clauses of a sentence.

Because tool-tip previews in Wikipedia do not render template contents, avoid using this template in the first 500 characters, or so, of the lead section text, exclusive of wikilinks and hypertext formatting characters. Instead, use "&nbsp;&ndash; " or "&nbsp;– ".